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George Eliot, George Henry Lewes, and the Logic of Signs

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George Eliot, George Henry Lewes, and the Logic of Signs George Eliot, George Henry Lewes, and the Logic of Signs Rosalind De Sailly At every point in her novel-writing career, Eliot was to ponder the connection between words and experience in the light of what we might call her Logic ofMind. Eliot saw mind as an organic process and this conception of mind provided her with a tlexible and scientific model for consciousness and behaviour and served as a basis for the enlightened realism of her novels. The best access we have to Eliot's view of the Victorian science of mind is in the works of combined psychology. physiology and philosophy written by the partner of her literary years, George Henry Lewes. He treated language unde:r the Comtean heading ofthc 'Logic ofSigns'. Long before Lewes made his laborious explanation of thc psychological workings of the 'Logic of Signs' in his final work, Problems ofLIfe {/nd Mind. Eliot hegan her essay 'The Natural History ofGerman Life' by writing in this way: 'It is an interesting branch of psychological observation to note the images that are hahitually associated with abstract or collectivc tcrms­ what may bc called the picture-writing ofthe mind. which it carries on concurrently with the more subtle symbolism oflanguagc'.1 Here Eliot approaches a psychologically based philosophy by describing the Logic oflmages-'the picture-writing ofthe mind'-and the Logic of Signs: 'the subtle symbolism of language'. Before shc began writing fiction and before Lewes attempted to enunciate the functions of languagc in the context of cerebral activity. Eliot tried to work ol;lt the association between language and cerebral activity in a way that would have meaning for her an. ' Eliot and Lewes were both concerned with discovering a progression in mental development which would account for the existence of conscience as something as inevitable and as exclusively human as art or philosophy. Higher reason is a mental 'logic' which Eliot wishes to find not only in statistical thinking but also in aesthetic appreciation and cven in feeling. Lewes broke down the organisation of mind into what he called a 'threefold division oflogic'. beginning with thc Logic of Feeling. progressing through the Logic of Images and ending in the Logic ofSigns. According to Lewes. the first stage. which entails 'the Animal Logic' based on feeling 'is never critical, always intuitive'. The Logic of Images involves the reprcsentation of primitive mental 115 The Sydney Society ofLiterature and Aesthetics states which are immediately connected with sensations. lllis logic must be further refined ifit is to be articulated as mental signs, because thought exists in relation to feeling in the same way that algebra exists in relation to arithmetic. The Logic of Signs extends intuitive or empirical knowledge into specialised realms of meaning, such as higher mathematics and language: it is associated with what Lewes calls 'the intellectual life, and is exclusively human'. He explains its function in this way: 'unless a word is formed there is no idea; unless the feeling takes articulate shape it remains a vague feeling and not an idea'. Thought and feeling are made precise by being articulated in signs.2 Eliot emphasises the importance of written language and mathematics as providing the mastery of complex ideas that are required for the development of higher feeling, ideas which are tools for building communities. 'Systematic co-operation implies general conceptions', she writes, 'and a provisional subordination of egoism ... which are as foreign to the mind of the peasant as logarithms or the doctrine ofchemical proportions'.3And elsewhere: 'Amiable impulses without intellect, man may have in common with dogs and horses; but morality, which is specifically human. is dependent on the regulation offecling by intellect'.4 The organisation ofknowledge and experience into mental signs represents a movement away from undifferentiated particulars to general moral laws and knowledge based on the emotions. lllis progress from a simple yet unorganised to a complicated yet abstract state of mind involves naming as part of the process by which rudimentary knowledge is transformed into moral understanding. As twentieth century philosophers of science such as Richard Dawkins recognise: 'mathematics ... doesn't only stretch the imagination. It also disciplines and controls it'.5 Altruism for Eliot depends upon the command of higher thought, and for her this includes both rational and non-rational types of knowledge. Rationality must be tempered by non-rational forms of inherited thought-patterns which depend on feeling, and language is one such inherited thought-pattern. In a late notebook Eliot writes'Are general ideas formed by animals? Not in our sense of concepts. Yet in another sense all ideas and images are general. for they are not signs'.6 It is clear that to be human is to master signs and, equally. that to master signs is to be human. In Eliot's first novel Allam Belle we find the Logic of Signs at the top of the novel's scale of values. The ability to understand signs gives the thinker access to an exclusively human morality which is higher 116 Rosalind De Sailly than those moral ideas shared with other animals. As the narrator in Adam Bede says compassionately about three rustics whom the schoolmaster is teaching to read: 'It was almost as if three rough animals were making humble efforts to learn how they might become human' (p.28l),7 The narrator endorses the schoolmaster's encouragement of his rustic learners towards literacy and the fuller humanity which accompanies it. By submitting themselves to the discipline of acquiring the accoutrements of human civilisation, Eliot suggests, individuals can accelerate beyond that development within a natural selection that depends on chance. The novel makes Adam both its hero and, at times, its spokesman because of his skills in the Logic of Signs, especially mathematics. Sally Shuttleworth has argued that 'Adam's social progress is synonymous with his power of mathematical addition' and that. at the same time, 'mathematical reasoning lends a rigidity to [his) social judgements'.8 But Adam's grasp ofthe abstract reasoning required for mathematics is both more homely and more sophisticated than is suggested by Shuttleworth's idea ofa straight-forward 'social progress'. His 'acquaintance with mechanics and figures' which arc 'the secrets ofhis handicraft' is 'made easy to him by the inborn inherited faculty' (p.258). This inheritance includes 'the mechanical instinct, the keen sensibility to harmony, the unconscious skill of the modelling hand' (p.84). All higher thought and achievement work towards a cumulative Logic of Signs which is independent of the individual. Lewes acknowledges that 'the Moral Sense and intellectual progress; arc ruled by the law of inheritance, and refers his readers to Herbert Spencer's Principles oj Psychology.9 The notion that such skills arc innate-a function of the development of a kind of General Mind-is also expressed in Problems, where Lewes writes 'in the development of Industry and the Mechanical Arts, the mind has acquired not only new powers, but the equivalents of new senses'.10 An enduring, inherited Logic ofSigns provides its possessor with instincts as various as feeling, language, morals and technical skill. Adam's skills have an everyday practicality. While he has 'not the heart of getting rich' (p.259) and so climbing the ladder of social progress, his sterling mental qualities are exemplitied both by his skill in pure mathematics (beyond that knowledge of carpentry 'inhe~ited' from his father and probably his grandfather before him), and his 'will' to master it. Mathematics is privileged as at once the most abstract and the highest form of knowledge: inductive reasoning. Adam's teacher suggests he might have 'gone into the higher branches' ofmathematics 117 The Sydney Society ofLiterature and Aesthetics 'ifhe hadn't had so much hard work to do' (p.463). Adam, however, is contl-nt to play his part in the workaday world. Ati.hough it would be unrealistic to expect that Adam, who lives outside a tiny village, should have learnt either another science that did not relate to his trade or one of the subjects such as Greek and Latin which the pastor and Arthur have studied at university, his skill with figures is a credible representation of his higher intellect and mastery of the abstract reasoning required for moral judgement. Such skill is not enough, however, to ensure a cultivated moral sense; Eliot makes the point that Adam and Dinah also need to develop the cultivated feeling that will issue in proper moral judgements. Intellectual pursuits and morals are both subject to a gradation. At the same time, Eliot warns against confusing rustic stupidity with moral innocence: 'It is .quite true', she writes, 'that a thresher is likely to be innocent of any adroit arithmetical cheating, but he is not the less likely to carry home his master's corn in his shoes and pocket' .11 Adam's'adroit arithmetical' proficiency does not corrupt him. of course, and Eliot makes mathematical reasoning function as an inherited skill which is both innate and cultivated and is connected with his capacity to make moral judgements. Dinah is the novel's other guide to higher reasoning and moral judgement. In line with Methodist principles, she takes the words of the Bible as signs to guide her feelings and words. These signs belong to an inherited moral culture and are valued by the agnostic Eliot because the Bible provides a set of moral signs which are beyond temporality and so belong to the Logic of Signs. Feelings and her own Logic of Signs compel Dinah to speak and act within the community. Her sympathetic words allow others to reach their higher selves, which they find within their own feelings and experience.
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